No. 214 November 2000
MEDICAL DEVICE ERROR CORRECTIONS According to the November 1999 Institute of Medicine publication To Err Is Human – Building a Safer Health System ( http://www.nap.edu/catalog/9728.html ) it is estimated that as many as 98,000 people die in any given year from medical errors that occur in hospitals. But the FDA thinks that errors, which relate to medical devices, are preventable. http://www.fda.gov/cdrh/useerror/index.html ). The health professionals who prescribe medical devices for patients both in the hospital and at home should review the FDA’s "Reducing Use Error" Checklist: "Make Sure the Medical Device You Chose is Designed For You" ( http://www.fda.gov/cdrh/useerror/you_choose_checklist.html ). It includes three questions: 1. Do you have limitations that can affect your use of the device? 2. Is the device right for the environment where you plan to use it? 3. Are there device characteristics that can affect its use? The answers will determine if the proposed medical device will be most effective for the patient. The FDA "Reducing Use Error" homepage has "Useful Links" http://www.fda.gov/cdrh/useerror/UsefulLinks.html listing fourteen other sites for error reporting systems, announcements, advisories, and other error prevention information resources.
PET AND PEOPLE MEDICINE If you had arthritis medicine and your dog had arthritis, would you share your medicine? You may be, doing that without knowing it. If you take Lodine for your arthritis and the veterinarian has given your dog EtoGesic, you will find these pills are different sizes, shapes, and colors. But the label on each shows the same active ingredient: Etodolac. You and your pet are part of an increasing number of instances in which humans and animals often take similar drugs for similar diseases. There are six "Drugs That Do Double Duty" listed by generic, animal, and human drug brand name(s), citing their "use in humans" and "use in animals". The animal drug's active ingredient may be in a smaller concentration than yours, and there might be different inactive ingredients. But that drug can alleviate the same pain, eliminate the same symptoms, and cure the same illness in him as in you. This new approach to "sharing with your pet(s)" is found in "Prescriptions for Healthier Animals: Pets and People Frequently Fight Disease with Similar Drugs" by Linda Bren. It is on the FDA Internet site at http://www.fda.gov/fdac/features/2000/600_pets.html and (in the paper version of) FDA Consumer v. 34, No. 6 November/December 2000 pages 24 -32 (HE 20.4010:34/6).
GPS AND HANSEL & GRETEL GPS is the Global Positioning System which should be part of the revised version of the Hansel and Grettel story. The new version has the Wicked Witch replaced by (our own) Federal Government. The GPS has been around since the 1970s when it was created to help provide navigational position and timing assistance to anyone on earth. "Civilian users of the GPS Standard Positioning Service (SPS) obtain accuracy better than 20 meters." But is this with or without "Selective Availability in effect? Designed for civilian, commercial, or military purposes, GPS is a global system of satellites, which by U.S. policy, is available free to the public user(s). However, in the May 1, 2000, "President Clinton ordered that the intentional degrading of the civilian Global Positioning System (GPS) signal be discontinued at midnight tonight". The Selective Availability, which was hindering the functioning, accuracy, and effectiveness of the GPS, is now finally ending. Because of the Selective Availability, our GPS was not working as it should from its inception through May 1, 2000. Learn about the many civilian uses and values of the GPS, the "intentional degrading", Selective Availability, and more details about the GPS in the "Frequently Asked Questions" section, pages 13-16, of National Civilian GPS Services: Global Positioning System (GPS), GPS augmentations, GPS modernization. Rev. Aug. 2000 (TD 1.2:C 49/3/2000-2). The Interagency GPS Executive Board homepage http://www.igeb.gov/ has about twenty links to federal agencies, activities, uses, and educational information related to GPS. Now, the new version of the Hansel and Gretel tale can make use of a GPS navigational device.
DOUSE/DOWSE Webster’s Third New International Unabridged Dictionary pages 680 and 683 show that (the word) Dowse is variation of (the word) Douse and vice versa. Douse means to throw water onto something to make it wet. Yet, on page 683 (the word) Dowse is the base stem for Dowsing, a verb signifying the American pioneers action of looking for water or ore in the ground with a diving rod. Did you know these two terms, which have "almost opposite" meanings, have the same pronunciation. The "‘Water dowsing’ refers in general to the practice of using a forked stick, rod, pendulum, or similar device to locate underground water, minerals, or other hidden or lost substances, and has been a subject of discussion and controversy for hundreds of years." The diving rod was used in the German Mines in the 1500s and in the English mines in the latter half of the 1500s. In the 17th century, this device was banned by the Church since it was linked to witches and witchcraft. U.S. Geological Survey published Water-Supply Paper (No.416) in 1917 by Arthur J. Ellis, The Diving Rod, and A History of Water Witching, with a Bibliography, by A J. Ellis in 1917. This Water Supply Paper can be found in the Congressional Serial Set No. 7180 as (64 Congress, 2nd Session) House Document No. 1041. This 59 page volume has a 28 page (chronologically arranged) bibliography of sources dated 1532 to 1917, also has a 9 page subject index. This Water Supply Paper (I 19.13:416) was reprinted in 1957. A summary of this historical information can be found in Water Dowsing, (I 19.2:W29/16/977) which is 15 pages of a wealth of information. Both titles can be found in depository libraries.
GOLD IS EVERWHERE American history, as found in the literature, movies, and history books is full of stories of how the desire for gold led the European explorers and America’s pioneers to move to, settle, and develop those parts of the western hemisphere where gold was thought to be found. Gold is everywhere on earth and in outer space. The gold miners aim was to find the most obvious source, that vain of "pure gold" in a mine or the nuggets in the steam. That would be the gold in the Earth’s crust, but gold is also found in rocks, minerals, water, plants, and animals. In Earth's sea water, there is an estimated 27.4 million tons of gold, but the amount of gold per cubic meter of sea water in the Atlantic Ocean (between Africa and South America) is about 0.004 ppb (parts per billion). Dried plants when burned reveal their gold content, as do many dried marine animals. There are tables for (each body of) water, the plants, and the marine animals identifying the amount of gold found in each. There are traces of gold found in the human hair and organs, also in cows and other land animals. However, "the amount of gold found in animal organs is entirely casual and that there are no auriferous animals anywhere in the world". Within the lengthy bibliography of 75 items, most are sources about gold in (marine and land) plants, (marine and land) animals, and (fresh and salt) water. There are three Geological Survey publications authored by Robert S. Jones which discuss the gold found in the earth’s crust, meteorites, rocks, and minerals. Gold Content of Water, Plants, and Animals, U.S. Geological Survey Circular 625, by Robert S. Jones in 1970 (I 19.4/2:625) is 15 pages of a gold mine of fascinating information about the golden world in which we live.
FIRES YOU SEE & FIRES YOU DON’T (SEE) Forest fires are the fires we saw on the news all last summer and fall. The U.S. Forest Service Fire and Aviation website http://www.fs.fed.us/fire/ has all the "Wildland Fires" Reports about all the forest fires we learned about via the television and newspaper. The National Interagency Coordination Center has 11 regional offices, which have issued Fire "Archived Sit Reports", which are available back to 1994. All these reports and access to the 11 Geographic Area Coordination Centers "Sit Reports" can be found at http://www.fs.fed.us/fire/reports.shtml . You can learn about the past and current information about forest fires in Kentucky or any other State and Canada. Then, there are fires you don’t see. Coal, which one of the primary home heating fuels used before the invention of the natural gas and fuel oil furnaces, burned very efficiently in residential and commercial (coal) furnaces. Coal can also burn in its natural state, in the underground or surface (strip) mines. Fires can start in operating mines for a variety of reasons. Fires in abandoned (underground) mines and in outcropped areas (i.e. where coal is on the surface) can start because of lightning, camp fires, brush or grass fires, or by spontaneous combustion. In 1971 there were about 200 fires along virgin coal outcrops and in abandoned underground mines in 16 of the 36 coal-bearing states. Underground fires can be from 30 to 300 feet below the surface. Some are easy to detect and put out, and some are not. Coal Fires In Abandoned Mines and Inactive Deposits is a 16 page (I 28.2:C63/7) 1972 Bureau of Mines publication with discussion and illustrations of coal mine fires which you don’t see.
PERFECT STORM: FACTS (AND MORAL) BEHIND THE FICTION At some time, between 1991 when the Perfect Storm occurred, and 1997 when the novel was published, Sebastian Jung read the weather report about an unusual weather occurrence, a Perfect Storm. Jung thought that would be a good story and book title. If you didn’t read the book or see the movie, the basic plot is about the (sword)fishing boat, the Andrea Gail, which leaves the harbor without its NOAA radio beacon locating device gets caught in the storm, and sinks. The phrase "The Perfect Storm" was coined by Bob Case, the meteorologist at the NOAA Office in 1991, but he did not explain how and why until June 20, 2000. The Perfect Storm was really an "unnamed hurricane" (a secondary storm within an existing hurricane). This was not given a hurricane name to avoid confusion with the existing hurricane. This "unprecedented weather event", this Perfect Storm, AKA the Halloween Storm, was "created from the collision between a high pressure system, a low pressure system, and the remnants of a dying hurricane. These unique weather conditions and "unprecedented weather conditions" that created the storm, the dramatic efforts to predict it, and the improvements in forecasting that followed it" sound like the content for a piece of non-fiction. To learn more about this "actual piece of weather history" review the content of "NOAA Meteorologists Recall the Drama of Forecasting ‘The Perfect Storm’" at http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories/s451.htm . The content for this bit of weather history has two websites. The "Unnamed Hurricane, 1991" is at http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/ol/satellite/satelliteseye/hurricanes/unnamed91/unnamed91.html . "The Perfect Storm" is at http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/ol/satellite/satelliteseye/cyclones/pfctstorm91/pfctstorm.html . Each site has own good reading but the latter site has a "Bizarre Ending" section that links to the "Hurricane Gallery" (which is actually the former site). Confused? The most important fact (the moral of the story) to remember is, if you are a boat owner with an EPRIB (Emergency Position-indicating Radio Beacon), never leave port without it.
FOREIGN SECURITIES LIST At http://www.federalreserve.gov/BoardDocs/ForeignMargin/default.htm is the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve's web page. It explains the issuance of the Board's List of Foreign Margin Stocks semiannually on March 1 and September 1. Each new list supersedes all previously published lists of foreign margin stocks. The List of Foreign Margin Stocks consists of foreign equity securities that have met the eligibility criteria of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System under its Regulation T and are eligible for margin treatment at brokers and dealers on the same basis as domestic margin securities. In the "About the List of Foreign Margin Stocks" ( http://www.federalreserve.gov/BoardDocs/ForeignMargin/about.htm ) is the Regulatory explanation of why the dealers can offer margin credit on all stocks, including the foreign stocks, trading in the NASDAQ Stock Market. The September 1, 2000 list is found at http://federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/foreignmargin/currentfms.htm and consists of about 70 Japanese stocks. The March 1, 2000 List of 73 companies included a German Company which was not in the September 1,2000 List.
NAMES & CHOICES, ETC. One does not have much choice about being born. Currently, one has the option of ending one’s life, but we were not given an option about being born. Shortly after birth, a baby is given a name. As simplistic as it may sound, it is true. The names John and Jane Doe are given to the otherwise legally nameless infants we read about in the newspaper. Names can be changed, the legal system provides the "how" but where do you need to find a new name? Other than the "baby name books" at your local library, an Internet source is Name Distributions in the Social Security Area by Michael W. Shackleford, SSA Actuarial Note Number 139, Originally published June 1998 (updated October 2000) is at http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/NOTES/note139/note139.html . This SSA web page publication consists of 25 links to as many electronic lists of names usage information. A thorough check of all the names found on these lists, which cover the years 1900 through 2000, should provide a new name you might like to select. If nothing else, you will get a name education. Should you get bored with a name education, there are other SSA (Social Security Administration) Actuarial Notes listed at http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/NOTES/actnote.html . These Actuarial Notes cover historical wage, disability, and other Social Security Benefits data.
February 14, 2001
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